I
was looking at works by Herbert Howells that reach their half-centenary in
2019. I consulted the catalogue included
in The Music of Herbert Howells (ed.
Cooke and Maw, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2013) to see what music was
written during that year. Included in the works list, was A Flourish for Bidding (H.H.326) for organ. It was not until I began
further investigation that I discovered that this is an error. In fact, it was
written the previous year, 1968. My primary
source for this revised date is Gillian Widdicombe’s article the Musical Times (November 1968) where she
describes the circumstances of premiere in some detail.
Other
music that Howells was working on at this time included the Coventry Mass and a couple of hymn
tunes: ‘In Manus Tuas’ and ‘Norfolk’.
I have
been aware of Herbert Howells short celebratory piece for organ, Flourish for a Bidding for several
years. However, I misunderstood its genesis. I assumed that it somehow referred
to a ‘bidding prayer’ as used in church. In other words, an invitation from the
vicar to his congregation to join in prayer. I was wrong. This attractive piece
was completed on 29 August 1968 and was presented at an auction to raise money
for the Royal College of Organists [RCO] Centenary Fund, hence ‘bidding’. Between
the years 1958-1960 Howells was President of the RCO and remained involved, so
he would have been the ideal person to approach for a new work, even if it was
deemed to be ephemeral. Novello paid the
princely sum of £21.00 for the manuscript. The
story of the other bids in this auction may be the subject of a further post.
George
Thalben-Ball (1896-1987) gave the first performance of the Flourish on 28 September 1968 at the Royal College of Organists which
were at that time based in Kensington Gore. Thalben-Ball was five years shy of the 50th
anniversary of his appointment to the post of Organist at Temple Church. He was
currently City Organist of Birmingham and was still working at the BBC. In 1968
he married his second wife, Jennifer Bate. He was aged 72 years.
The
organ played at the RCO was the then new three-manual Messrs William Hill and
Son and Norman & Beard Ltd instrument commissioned on 7 October 1967. It is
interesting that this instrument was not typical of the design usually required
for Howells’s music. It had been influenced by the Organ Reform principles
which was inspired by the ‘Back to Bach and Baroque’ movement. Most of Howells’s organ works are designed
for the more romantic sounding ‘orchestral’ organ.
Despite
the composer having a nine-year interregnum in writing organ music he was to
have two new works performed over a period of three days: on 25 September, John
Birch played Howells’s Rhapsody No.4 at Westminster Abbey. This work had been
composed during April 1958 and was later published together with the Prelude: ‘De
Profundis’ by Novello in 1983.
The Flourish is
much less ‘romantic’ in sound than Howells earlier organ ‘Rhapsodies’ and Psalm
Tune Preludes and relies on jerky, ‘declamatory’ phrases to provide the
momentum. It is typically in ternary form, with the two ‘sections’
repeated several times. It opens with an ‘allegro energico’ presenting a powerful
paean of praise. The opening bar gives the basic germ of much of the
piece. There is a good balance here
between three-part counterpoint and incisive chords played over a busy pedal
part. The piece begins in 3/4 metre but
frequently interposes bars of 2/4 time. Each section is presented around a rapidly
modulating tonal centre beginning on A minor and ending in C major. The final
chord may be a bit of a cliché: C major with the added 7th (B
natural), but it is effective. Robin Wells (Musical
Times, August 1987) has noted that the musical style is like the Partita (1972) and the Epilogue (1974). Several of the ideas in the Flourish
were to reappear in this Partita for organ composed in 1971 for the then Prime
Minister Edward Heath.
A Flourish for Bidding was included in Three Pieces, published by Novello in 1987. The other two works
were ‘Intrata No.2’ and ‘St Louis comes to Clifton.’ It was edited by Robin
Wells.
A good recording of this work, played
by Adrian Partington, was issued on The Organ Music of Herbert Howells Vol 3 - The Organ
of Winchester Cathedral the Priory Label (PRCD 547) in 1998. This
track has been uploaded to YouTube.
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